


Mortal Toil

by Zafaria



Category: Wizard101
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 04:15:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zafaria/pseuds/Zafaria
Summary: A new beginning or this is the end?





	Mortal Toil

At first, there was darkness, and so it would end that way too.

Bartleby sang the First World into it’s glorious and fiery existence, with piercing hail plummeting through the sky and blue lightning connecting with the ripe earth. It was made with overwhelming brightness, a field of halo-light from a yellow sun. It was balanced by chaos and ever-rupturing molten fissures, tempestuous and sinister clouds, rapid gusts with cold that tore through skin down to bone. 

Like all things created, it was imperfect and after some age and wear, the World’s flaws began to show with the years. From the inside out, it cracked and eroded. There were some beings on the world already, and they too weakened. Warring clans roamed the lands. Gnarled tree roots reached up to the sky for salvation. Above all, three Titans fought and won and lost and destroyed. 

Seeing the mistakes and the tyrants, the Grandfather Tree closed his eyes, saddened to let go of his first work. He sighed heavily, reaching his gentle branches out to one of each of his children. 

"I will take you into the new world, just you,“ he would say. They would grow fearful of the prophecy and babble to the others of their kind about the uncertain future of their world and their people. Many times, they were met with wide eyes, and then dismissive waving a few moments later. It wouldn’t matter if they were believed. Nothing could be done anyways.

And so, sadly, Bartleby said goodbye to his original concept, a wistful and distant blue in his dull eyes. He would sing the song of creation again, and create a new masterpiece. He loved so dearly the old world though, he ripped pieces from it’s canvas as neatly as he could and propelled them into a new existence.

He grew old quickly, and the marble brickwork of a school sprung up around him. Elsewhere in the fragments, the surviving children toiled to rebuild their empires. They were determined to appease Bartleby and his sister, proving to them their worth and obtaining everlasting salvation from the soft hum of the reversive tune. "You cannot destroy us, your children!” they would say. “Look at what we have built to honor you!”

Bartleby forgot his children when his eye was plucked from his furrowed bark. He forgot his original work, and why he had made the new world. With a single glassy eye, he gazed out over the stone towers and small people bustling between them. He did not understand, and did not try to; he was finally exhausted. He was an artist who needed a long rest after finishing his magnum opus.

Sister Raven was not so at ease. She looked over this new world and saw what Bartleby didn’t. She identified the same corruption and betrayal from the First World. It was not limited to the Titans though. They were all put to bed, slumbering destroyers waiting for a rattle to wake up. The factions were now in the children. Traitors transcended races and kinship; where there seemed to be unified groups of all kinds of beings, there was another group of diverse beings split against them over other matters, light and dark. Where new alliances were forged, hostile minds were merged and new enemies absorbed into groups’ lists of hatred.

Nightstar thought a long time over these issues. A persistent commotion, it was not unique to either world. The chaos percolated into all of life, before or after schism, an ever-present entity of existence.

An ever-present entity. There was only one other ever-present entity. Where the Raven created wisdom and light, and Bartleby created generosity and prosperity, Grandfather Spider created discord and uncertainty. It was his existence that allowed the transmission of chaos between worlds. And so, it was time to amend that, and create the Final World, with its absence of chaos and preponderance of certainty. A completely foreseen, predictable land. 

Perhaps before Raven had these inclinations, the children sensed them. They formed their measly committees drawing from all corners of the universe, plucking their select magicians from this floating rock and then the next. They sat around in dusty rooms, dozens in concentric circles. They talked of important things and fearful things with their stern faces and unwavering jaws. Only after the meetings in the silence of their apartments did they look out over the world for what it was. They would see the dancing fuzzy grass in the wind, or the twinkle of distant nebulae against the prussian blue sky. Even the fiery hearth of the most cracked and fissured world proudly wore rust-colored opal towers hinting at past grandness and long history. Maybe their jaw would tighten a little and their nostrils would flare. They inhaled suddenly as a tear slipped out of their eye. They saw the world, and it was beautiful. They saw their home.

It was their duty, though, to expedite the unchangeable future. Some of the children always saw the end of the Second World as ushering in a restoration of the First World. In truth, the recreation could’ve been in any manner, taking one of an infinite number of forms. Where some people saw the end of the Second World drawn out to it’s last possible breath, the final world would be some idyllic paradise where the sun always shined and the trees never wilted. Other saw the same basics of that legendary First World restored. It would be tribal, maybe, but it would be what it was always meant to. The Second World was just a sloppy edition. The First World really was the best possible design.

And aside from any of these, Raven saw something very different. The final world would be colorless. It would be engulfed in so much light and righteousness, everything would be blinding white. In the unbelievable luminescence, where nothing disrupted the brightness, there would be perfection. There would be no beings with their forms to block the radiance, and there would be no shadows cast behind them. 

The Second World existed in it’s wounded state for only a fraction of the time that the First World did. It was a long and drawn out dying. Over the many ages, plots rose and fell between the little factions, and Raven would look down on the small lives, taking the chaos as further evidence it was time to restart. Here and there a short vanguard would approach. They’d ask “why” or “how”. They’d jump between the worlds connecting artifacts talking to divines and near-divines and try to delay the fate of the rotting universe. After some time, they met their glorious unfortunate end. The task would always be left incomplete, passed down to a new hand. Raven would watch the last duels, the dark retirement cottages, the bustling taverns. When each one passed, she yawned and turned her gaze elsewhere.

There was one bug that released Grandfather Spider. Menial, but a pest. They complicated things but not irreversibly so for Raven’s plan. Indeed, Raven found that more than anything, it was a signal that it was finally time to finish the job. She placed her puppets in locations around the lands, ready to aid the hero in destroying the Spider, ending the chaos, and then the world. By the time the little being wizened up, Raven’s allies had grown strong enough to finish their work without the wizard’s help. Somewhere on one of the many floating rocks, there was a fine duel circle and a drawn-out cautious jaunt between Raven and Spider. And then Spider collapsed, but not before pulling back his hood and revealing his eight wide eyes and hapless smile. He waved his staff and in the same instant he was gone, the world faded away too. 

The beings all ended mid-breath and then were crushed and absolved. The universe no longer breathed or built or wept or rumbled. It was a void, and there was no light, not even Raven’s. Time was violently ripped from space. Where there was time, it was flat. Where there was space, it was static.

And there was no life, or obelisks, or stardust. There was simply nothing.


End file.
